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About Michael J. Miller

Miller, who was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this blog for PC Magazine to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

Product Demos at D4

Although D4 is not primarily a product introduction show, a number of new things were shown on stage or at a "science fair" that goes along with it.

Perhaps the most interesting of these was Zing, a new platform for connected music devices. The reference design looks like a fairly standard flash music player, but when connected you can share play lists with your friends online, sign up for alerts from specific artists, download from a subscription service or buy the music over the air. It uses the PlaysForSure DRM. Zing showed a partnership with Sirus radio where you can listen to music from that service - Sirius will be shipping a product this summer, they said, with other partners shipping other devices later in the year.

Presto showed a simple service and a printing device aimed at getting photos and mail to people who weren't well connected, such as seniors. Typically, you would set up such a service for a parent, where you could control who can send messages, and set up various templates for a look. Then you would send a message to that address. It would then print out automatically on the little printer, so the senior wouldn't have to go online to get it.

Sharpcast showed its software for taking photos, etc. and uploading onto the web, and then having it replicated on multiple machines, ranging from laptops to mobile phones. Eventually this is planned to be a platform for different kinds of information, and the demo also showed contact information from Outlook automatically syncing with an address book on the phone. I first saw this at Demo, and it is expected to ship later this year.

Sony showed its new Reader, a very small device about the size of a thin paperback book that could hold up to 80 pages. It uses electronic ink on an electrostatic screen; since it only uses battery when it is changing pages, and therefore can let you view thousands of pages on a single charge. The product should cost between $300 and $400 and is promised for the holiday season. I'm really looking forward to trying one out.

Nicholas Negroponte showed off his "$100 laptop" (which I wrote about earlier this month) and talked about how he hopes to launch next year. The model he showed this time was small and orange, with a Fedora Linux desktop. He said he needs commitments for 5 to 10 million to launch, and said that the governments of Nigeria, Brazil, Thailand, and Argentina were most enthusiastic.

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